Rail on Richmond idea first rejected back in '83

MOVE IT!

RAD SALLEE, Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle |
April 24, 2006

Retired architect Edward "Ted" Richardson dropped by last week with some interesting reading: two environmental impact statements that the Metropolitan Transit Authority produced in the early 1980s for what it then called the "Southwest/Westpark corridor."

Richardson, who lives just north of Richmond Avenue and lived at the time just south of Westpark, says he eventually supported the plan Metro put to voters in 1983, but only after then-general manager Alan Kiepper made promises to the neighborhood about noise, visual impact and privacy.

Richardson says he'd also favor the University light rail line that Metro is now planning if the tracks go along Westpark instead of Richmond and if they're elevated over major cross streets. Metro is considering each street for the University line, as well as a combination of the two, but is unlikely to elevate the track because of the expense.

The 1983 plan was ambitious — an 18-mile heavy rail line costing $2.35 billion. That's $4.6 billion in today's dollars. It was to start on the North Side near Crosstimbers and Hardy, rumble under Buffalo Bayou and Main Street in downtown, surface south of the Pierce Elevated and follow Travis and Spur 527 to the Southwest Freeway.

From that point the line was to run on the north side of the freeway to Mandell, cross over to the south side at Hazard (the arch bridges weren't there then), and continue between Westpark and the Southern Pacific rail tracks (which no longer exist) to the Beltway.

From downtown to Fountainview it would have been elevated except for a tunnel under the West Loop. Only six of the 17 stations were to be at street level: Three were in the downtown subway and eight elevated.

An interesting sidelight to today's debate: Both street-level light rail as a transit mode, and Richmond as a route, were ruled out. The 1980 draft environmental statement says light rail would cause "severe traffic disruption on major cross streets and operate at relatively low speed."

" The aerial configuration was determined to be too disruptive and the subway was found to be prohibitively expensive.

Did I mention? Voters turned down that plan by a scorching 62 percent to 38 percent. Two decades later, by contrast, they approved — narrowly — the plan that's binding now.

Metro Vice President John Sedlak, who arrived in Spring 1983, recalls that "the long-range concept was as a commuter system to link passengers from the outer suburbs ... to activity centers."

At the time, Sedlak notes, there was just one experimental "contraflow" lane on the North Freeway.

After the referendum defeat, he said, "we focused on a rubber-tired solution," building the Katy, North and Gulf Freeway HOV lanes in rapid succession, followed by the Northwest and Southwest freeway lanes.

That took care of the commuters.

"But 90 percent of our riders were on local and express buses," Sedlak said, "so then the need was to make significant improvements to the local system." The Main Street rail line, he said, was the start of that, replacing numerous buses with cleaner, quieter trains.

"The concepts in 1983 were different concepts," he said.

And a lot has happened since then.

But it's good to be reminded that smart people gave these same issues a lot of thought, way back when.

The point was a huge bottleneck during the evacuation from Hurricane Rita last year.

Here's an outline from TxDOT. All but the last call for four main lanes in each direction, plus 3-lane frontage roads.

•FM 1488 to South Loop 336 in Conroe: under construction, completion fall 2008.
•South Loop 336 to North Loop 336: contract to be let (and work to start soon after) in December 2007.
•North Loop 336 to FM 830: contract September 2008.
•FM 830 to Walker County line, three main lanes in each direction: contract September 2008.